Where is God?

I'm sitting here today thinking about how wonderful and beautiful life is, about how the goodness of God shines through the darkest moments, and that however hard we try, once we know Him, we can't turn away forever.

I turn my back on the enemy and he can stab me in a back, but he cannot pierce my heart from there whilst the breastplate of righteousness covers me. Whilst the shadow of God's wings covers me, whilst the blood of Christ covers me. From all sides I am covered, from all sides I am protected.

Yet a week ago I was sitting here a mess of tears wondering how this moment could be happening, how God could let me suffer this. Because a week ago, my Nan almost died. The most important word in that sentence is 'almost.' This has happened before, I've been told that she was going into hospital, that the doctors didn't know what else to do, that they'd tried everything but didn't think she could recover. I've been told these things, but it was 7 years ago, I was 14, it was the year my Grandmother died, for several summers it had been visits between two hospitals, I know the smell and the corridors and the nurses of those hospitals. I know where the flower room was where you could go and cut the flowers people had brought and find a vase for them.

So when 7 years later I get a call, my Nanny, she's waiting for the ambulance, I hear from my mother that it's bad, that she might not last a week. I'm half way through writing an essay, my last assignment of the year before exams, and it really matters, up until that moment it mattered. But now I just want to get on a train... no, not a train, a plane! I want to be there, I want a teleport, I want to see her, I want her to see how much I love her. I don't want to sleep because what if she dies whilst I'm sleeping, I fight myself to finish the paper which is already late, I finish the paper, I need to revise, I have an exam in less than a week, I must revise. I don't want to revise, what if she dies whilst I'm sitting that exam, why can't I be there! Why! And I start to pray, and I'm fighting myself for the words, because I know that I want to see her, but I can't pray for her to hang on another few days for me to get there, no, she can't suffer pain just so she can see me. So I pray to God that whatever it is, whatever He wants, take the pain away, take her pain away, if she dies then she isn't in pain, and if she lives let her be better. Please God, just don't let her suffer any more of this! I revise, every few minutes I find I don't know what I've read and the tears are wheeling up in my eyes, I cannot see. I just want to cry, because how can this be happening again, how can we not know what will happen, can she get better again, she's older now, can she get through this.

I cry out to God, so many questions and fears in my mind, and I just cry as I listen to the words the Church are singing "now we arrive at eternity's shore, where death is just a memory and tears are no more" and all I can do is let the tears roll down my face and my heart is screaming now "I CAN'T DO THIS!" and then, my mind, but for a second is still, and I hear the words in a whisper "No, you can't, but I can." In that moment of stillness some level of peace enters my heart. I still want to cry, but I know God is there. Yet not for another few hours did I come out of the haze I'd felt in my head for a week, but within 24 I understood. She was better. I didn't quite believe it. I laughed and cried as I heard, this was another kind of miracle. I knew at Church on Sunday, when the haze lifted, when God gave me a fresh sense of purpose, that even if she had gone to Him at that moment it would have been okay, because she'd "arrive at eternity's shore, where death is just a memory and tears are no more."